The Bookseller.com

7th January 2009

Neill Denny is editor-in-chief of The Bookseller. He will be blogging on the book business and on how the print magazine is produced each week.

A declaration of co-dependence

03.11.08

After three years of bitter argument and behind-the-scenes wheeler-dealing a concord has been struck between Google and the US publishing community. Essentially, Google has bought the right to reproduce books online for $125m (£77.5m), in what has been described as the largest publishing deal in history.

Several points need to be made immediately. Although this deal only applies in the US and, indeed, it hangs on a final judicial ratification, the structure agreed this week in America will almost certainly come here. Second, it has always made sense for Google and the publishers to reach a deal because both sides can make vast sums from distributing book content online. Finally, and by far most importantly, Google has been forced to concede the core principle of copyright. It is impossible to overstate the significance of this: in a post-book world, copyright is the only thing that publishers and authors really own, and it forms the ultimate basis of all their income—and hence provides much of the motivation to write and to publish.

Under the terms of the deal a central body, the Book Rights Registry, will be set up to administer payments to authors and publishers. When a book is sold after the buyer has indulged in some online browsing, roughly two-thirds of the money will go to the publisher and author, with Google keeping the rest. Google has scanned millions of out-of-print titles, both in and out of copyright, and the deal provides a legal framework for that vast ocean of knowledge to be offered to readers.

So almost overnight, not only has the largest publishing deal been struck, but the largest bookshop in the world has been built, even if it is not quite open for business yet. No doubt this is a scary prospect for other booksellers, but beyond any partisan self--interest it can only be a good thing for the book trade overall that one of the largest, richest and most progressive companies on the planet has been brought into the trade. Google may not be quite house-trained, but better to have the company in the tent than out of it.

Questions remain of course. The whole concept of right reversals when out of print needs urgent revision; and how exactly will the revenue be split between authors and publishers. The Amazon Kindle, a propriety e-reader, has clearly been undermined if consumers can read/buy the seven million titles Google has already scanned. But for all who believe in copyright, and that browsing leads to buying, and that the web and the book trade really need each other quite badly, this has been a good deal. 

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